Wednesday
10/07/2009 05:09:00 PM

The Google PowerMeter team is pleased to announce an important milestone for our product -- open enrollment. This means that utilities can enable self-serve sign-up for customers to use the Google PowerMeter gadget. More users means improved feedback on our product and this will translate into an improved product experience. Here's how it works: If your utility has open enrollment enabled for your account, with just two simple steps you can have your usage data transmitted to Google and visible online via Google PowerMeter.

Yello Strom, a German utility and our first partner in Europe, is fully up and running with open enrollment. All of the customers who use Yello's smart electricity meter - the Sparzähler - can now also view their individual electricity consumption online using Google PowerMeter. With over 1.4 million customers, Yello is among Germany's top ten electricity companies and the very first company to offer commercial smart meters nationwide in Germany since 2008. Yello’s smart meter interacts with a PC to make energy consumption visible for the customer – both in real-time within their own household and online at fifteen-minute intervals. Expanding the number of customers who can sign up for Google PowerMeter is just one more way this forward-thinking utility is improving access to energy information. As Executive Director Martin Vesper put it, "We are now offering our customers even more ways to maintain an overview of their electricity consumption with the help of the internet. And when people know exactly what is going on with their energy usage, they can use energy efficiently without sacrificing convenience."

Other Google PowerMeter partners are also working towards open enrollment capabilities. Florida's JEA has built an open enrollment system and is actively rolling it out within their customer base. And National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC), the latest addition to our strategic partners, is actively integrating Google PowerMeter into their offerings for all Utility Co-ops that they service.

Open enrollment and our recent device announcement mean that even more users can now see their electricity data to save energy and money!